Shredded cheese is a growing component of the overall cheese market largely because such a product offers added consumer convenience in the preparation of a wide variety of products without the necessity of manually shredding a block of cheese with a cheese grater or similar device. Cheese shreds may be used to provide a melted cheese topping on a food item that is more uniformly distributed than would be possible using larger blocks or slices of the same cheese. Shredded cheeses, for example, can be used as toppings or ingredients in homemade dishes such as pizzas, nachos, casseroles, salads, and the like, as well as in restaurant food items or retail snack and meal products. Shelf stable meal kits, including pizza kits, taco kits, pasta meal kits, and salad kits, represent an especially promising market for the present invention.
Since cheese shreds may be incorporated into a number of foods and snacks, they are often fortified with nutritional supplements. Nutritional fortification of cheese products may include supplementation with compounds or additives that benefit the overall state of health of the human body. Examples of nutritional fortification include supplementation by vitamins, minerals, and comparable ingredients. Thus, vitamins and minerals that are important to human metabolism, or that are ordinarily not available in sufficient amounts in the normal diet, may be added to the cheese shreds.
Ideally, cheese shreds should not agglomerate during storage and use, and should provide melting characteristics and organoleptic properties similar to their counterpart non-shredded cheeses. Agglomeration can be a problem in both refrigerated and unrefrigerated cheese shreds. Unfortunately, to provide a non-agglomerating shredded cheese it is usually necessary to incorporate significant amounts of anti-caking agent in the shredded cheese. One such anti-caking agent is described by Reddy in U.S. Pat. No. 5,626,893. Anti-caking agents generally have adverse effects on melting and other organoleptic properties. For example, excess anti-caking agents tend to restrict melt characteristics or cause excessive browning when melted, both of which are perceived negatively by the consumer. Additionally, many anti-caking agents also impart an undesirable gritty texture to the shredded cheese product. Often the anti-caking agents also appear as white flecks or particulates on the cheese surfaces, which may be mistaken as mold growth by the consumer. Anti-caking agents also are often relatively expensive and tend to deteriorate functionality, such as storage properties, for instance by fostering unwanted microbial growth.
Agglomeration is also a problem when cheese shreds are subjected to temperature abuse. When subjected to temperatures of about 80 to about 100° F. during transportation or storage, cheese shreds will often lose physical integrity and clump together. Prior to the present invention, it was thought impossible to create a shredded cheese that would maintain physical integrity under abusive temperatures such as about 80 to about 100° F.
Cheese shreds also are often prone to “oiling off” when not stored at refrigerated temperature. Oiling off refers to the separation of oil from other components of cheese, resulting in the cheese product exuding oil when heated. Conventional cheese shreds can exhibit significant oiling off when stored at room temperature or elevated temperatures, and further oil separation upon heating is often exhibited.
Conventional cheese products generally have water activities of about 0.92 to about 1 and must, therefore, be stored at refrigerated temperatures to avoid spoilage by microbial growth. Water activity is a measure of the free water in a system. Foods with greater water activity tend to enable more microbial growth. Therefore, attempts to produce shelf-stable cheeses that can be stored at room temperature have generally involved the reduction of water activity and/or overall moisture in the cheese composition. Such efforts generally result in a brittle and dry cheese. These properties are considered to be defects in many cheeses, and are especially noticeable when the cheese is used to prepare shredded cheese because of the increased surface area of cheese shreds. Another manner of extending the shelf life of cheeses has been to use special packaging and/or refrigeration during shipping and marketing, as well as during storage by the consumer. However, specialized packaging tends to be quite expensive. Moreover, temperature abuse may lead to spoilage or loss of organoleptic acceptability even with special packaging.
The need to refrigerate cheese during shipping adds to the expense of distribution, and can limit distribution in remote and/or undeveloped areas, areas where refrigerated transportation and/or storage is not available and/or practical, and areas of intense heat. Malfunctioning of refrigeration equipment may also lead to the loss of entire shipments of cheese due to loss of organoleptic integrity, loss of texture properties, or spoilage due to microbiological growth such as mold or bacteria. In addition, the need to store shredded cheeses under refrigerated conditions greatly reduces the convenience of such products to the ordinary consumer. Therefore, a shelf stable shredded cheese or shredded cheese product that would not require refrigeration would reduce distribution expenses and increase the markets in which cheese and cheese products may be sold.
Although some attempts have been made to create shelf stable cheeses prior to the present invention, none have been able to provide organoleptically acceptable cheese shreds that maintain physical integrity and resist undesirable microbial growth under room temperature conditions. For instance, Gamay et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,935,634 describes a low water activity cheese product that is shelf stable. Isom et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,426,102, describes a method for coating shredded cheese with a supplement comprising calcium sulfate dihydrate rather than an anti-caking agent to prevent agglomeration. Neither Gamay nor Isom discloses a shredded cheese product that may be stored at room temperature or elevated temperatures while resisting agglomeration and maintaining good melt characteristics.
It would be desirable and advantageous, therefore, to provide shelf-stable cheeses, especially shredded cheeses, as well as a method for manufacturing such cheeses, that exhibit long shelf life and satisfactory organoleptic properties when stored at room temperatures. It is also desirable and advantageous to provide such shelf stable cheeses, especially shredded cheeses, and methods of manufacturing such cheeses, that are capable of withstanding temperature abuse, and that exhibit good melting properties. It is also desirable and advantageous to provide a cheese, and a method of manufacture for such cheese, that exhibits extended shelf life and satisfactory organoleptic properties when shredded and stored at room temperature, and that avoids agglomeration under temperatures of about 60 to about 100° F. when in shredded form. The present invention provides such methods and products.